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The judges for this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing have just been announced. The panel, chaired by art historian and broadcaster Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, will be sifting through the 96 stories that qualified for the prize in May and announcing a shortlist. The winning story will be announced on July 8 at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

This is the first year that a previous winner will be included on the judging panel, as Leila Aboulela joins the judges after winning the inaugural prize. The other judges are Nigerian-born artist Sokari Douglas Camp, John Sutherland who is a writer and Lord Northcliffe Emeritus Professor at UCL and Nathan Hensley who is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University.

The judges of this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing were announced today. The panel will be chaired by art historian and broadcaster Dr Gus Casely-Hayford. He will be joined by award-winning Nigerian-born artist, Sokari Douglas Camp; author, columnist and Lord Northcliffe Emeritus Professor at UCL, John Sutherland; Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, Professor Nathan Hensley and the winner of the Caine Prize in its inaugural year, Leila Aboulela. This is the first time that a past winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will take part in the judging.

This year 96 qualifying stories have been submitted to the judges from 16 African countries. The judges will meet in early May to decide on the shortlisted stories, which will be announced shortly thereafter. The winning story will be announced at a dinner at the Bodleian Library in Oxford on Monday 8 July.

Included in the 2012 anthology is the story by last year’s Nigerian winner, Rotimi Babatunde. Chair of judges Bernardine Evaristo said at the time, “Bombay’s Republic vividly describes the story of a Nigerian soldier fighting in the Burma campaign of World War Two. It is ambitious, darkly humorous and in soaring, scorching prose exposes the exploitative nature of the colonial project and the psychology of Independence.”